Hollywood Loves A Coming Of Age Story

Every year, Hollywood releases a good coming-of-age story. It’s a popular genre, one that has been rewritten over and over again, in a variety of ways. Last year, we saw The Edge of Seventeen. In 2015, there was Me, Earl, & the Dying Girl. Before that, Boyhood.

These films may feature different struggles—drinking, sex, disease, etc. But primarily, they are about young adults discovering who they are and how they fit into the world that will soon belong to them.

They’re about relationships, the importance of family, coming to terms with the humanity of parents, the inevitability of growing up, and the sadness found in those last moments of childhood.

The popularity is easy to understand. As adults, we’ve all been there. We’ve all worried about the same things, at least here in the United States. These stories remind us who we were and how we changed. A bildungsroman is nothing if not self-reflective. Who doesn’t enjoy thinking about themselves?

This year’s story is Lady Bird, a film about a young woman looking to escape the world she knows and find something better in a world she doesn’t. Lady Bird McPhereson (Saoirse Ronin) has a flair for the dramatic. She’s the type of girl who will leap from a moving car to escape the passive aggressive attacks of her well-meaning mother.

Marion McPherson (Laurie Metcalf) regularly fights with her daughter over small things. But sometimes with teenagers, those small things are a reflection of a larger disapproval, one of embarrassment and entitlement. Lady Bird has the markings of every teenage girl—a life apart from her parents, filled with friends and experiences that they have no knowledge of.

The film spends a year with Lady Bird, her final year of high school at a Catholic school in Sacramento, California, watching her lash out at her home town. She develops new friendships and new relationships by pretending to be someone else, at the expense of her other friends.

We see a constant reinvention, attempting to be anyone other than herself, or at least her current version of herself. In other words, the film is like every other coming-of-age story you’ve ever seen.

Still, there is a freshness to the story that comes from the relationship between Lady Bird and her mother. In one especially powerful scene, Lady Bird is choosing a dress for prom (at a thrift store), and comes across one that she loves. Her mother asks if it’s too pink.

This seemingly innocuous comment is received as a judgment on taste, leading Lady Bird to ask her mother if she likes her. Marion responds: “Of course I love you…” But that wasn’t the question. What the film captures well is how mothers and daughters excel at talking around their issues without every discussing them directly. Anyone with a wife and daughter has seen this happen first hand (and likely knows better than to get involved).

Writer/director Greta Gerwig shows her talent in scenes like this one, allowing the characters to respond to each other in relatable and real ways, with dialogue that doesn’t sound overwrought.

The characters feel real, the situations more than plausible, and the overall effect is that the film is pleasant and watchable.

Of course, this couldn’t happen without strong performances. Both Ronin and Metcalf deliver in the film, which is to be expected from such competent artists. But also of note are Tracey Letts as Lady Bird’s father Larry and Beanie Feldstein as Lady Bird’s best friend Julie.

Letts knows how to play his part as a struggling provider both intimidated by the women in his life while defending them in understated ways.

Feldstein, however, is simply wonderful onscreen, a glowing presence of light and levity, a counterbalance to Lady Bird’s endless self-involvement. Without a cast this good, the film would struggle to find its feet.

Still, Lady Bird doesn’t break new ground. It doesn’t really have to. Every coming-of-age story is the same, just with different variations on a theme.

They are a vehicle for great acting, wonderful direction, and affecting storytelling. They are the opposite of the big Hollywood picture, which is refreshing to say the least.

Films like Lady Bird are pallet cleansers between the Disney special effects bonanzas. We all need one of those.